The following is paraphrased from Dennis Prager, with my additions. In school we learn that there are essentially two elements that make product us, nature and nurture. We are the sum bonum of our genetic makeup and environmental factors. While there is some truth to this, it is, nonetheless, incomplete. There is another element, a third element, which transcends nature and nurture, and makes you who you are; YOU.
If we were only the product of genetics and environment, we would essentially be helpless as to our state of being, for we would be subject to two factors over which we have no control. Using the metaphor of a ship, the ship being your life, we have captain nature, captain nurture, and captain you. To believe that there are only two factors which make product us is to believe that steering the ship is captain nature, captain nurture, and we are only passengers. Essentially we have no real control over the direction of the ship.
The last two lines of William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus” reads, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” While environmental factors and genetic makeup certainly play a significant role in our being, ultimately we can decide how we react, feel, and conduct ourselves. We are free agents unto ourselves. It is hard to convince a human being, myself included, that we actually have or can obtain control over these things.
Adversarial forces and secular society would have you believe that there is no “you” factor which makes up your being. You are, again, the product of forces over which you had no control. This is why most secular societies hate prisons. They see them in essence as being filled with victims to environmental and/or genetic forces. This philosophy negates a man from any personal responsibility for his actions, he being really nothing more than a created product, having no dominion over his own creation.
The same aforementioned forces encourage and promulgate the idea of victimhood. Satan, the master adversary, would have us believe that we are helpless as to our state of being, and that we have no control over our actions. He would have us believe that we are not free agents, or that we have no free agency. It is he who has sought to deprive it from us from the beginning. Fascinating since free agency is the one possession which is truly ours, a gift given to us from God, and which has been the unperceived motive behind nearly all the great battles and wars of history.
